Wanderlust Festival 2012 Day 1 Recap

25Jun

On Thursday of last week, I headed up to Stratton Mountain in Vermont for Wanderlust Festival as a guest of Timberland. Timberland was a major sponsor for this year’s event, hosting hikes, meditation sessions and recycling efforts and more. I was excited to be invited but with a wedding on Saturday could not stay the entire time. I tried to make my 36 hours in VT the best I could.

When I first arrived, I checked in and got a feel for the set up. My first session was hooping with Hoopnotica. If you have not been a successful hooper in the past, I learned that it’s probably because you were using the wrong weight and sized hoop. I could feel my abs working and had a ton fun while doing it. I’m glad I was able to experience the class.

One girl in my class was crazy good at using the hoop. She informed me that she had only begun using one two months ago and used YouTube to learn new tricks. Smart girl! Although she admitted she didn’t notice a big difference, her coworkers did! The said that they had seen a drastic change in her midsection she started using the hoop. Also, the hoop actually comes apart so it’s easy to travel with and store.

Next was a detox yoga session with Seane Corn. I was unaware of Seane’s yoga status as one of the top elite. She began with a quick lecture, sharing her personal story as to why she is very active in towards philanthropic topics. She is a leading voice in the yoga community when it comes to igniting social change including AIDS in Africa, Off The Mat and Into The World and more recently YogaVotes.org which is hoping to create a Yoga constituency and help issues that matter to yogis be heard in DC.

Her class began with challenging plank like poses to fire up our core, and then transitioned into an unpredictable twisting detox class. I love detox yoga classes because they are challenging enough and often mimic many of the “Yoga for Runners” like stretching. I made sure to rehydrate afterwards because when you do a ton of yoga twists, it helps your body to release “toxins” and sometimes can make you feel nauseous. Water helps flush them out of your system. Camelbak put up water stations throughout the village for us to refill our eco-friendly water bottles. I was glad I brought mine!

Despite Seane’s words to inspire us to eat healthy, reduce environmental toxins and avoid processed goodies during the detox flow, I had to snag a free sample Ben and Jerry’s new Greek Frozen Yogurt flavors. The Banana Peanut Butter is amazing. It’s 220 calories for a 1/2 cup so I probably won’t be buying it but it’s worth a taste if you love ice cream. The best Greek flavor they had by far.

As I walked back to my hotel to shower and change for dinner, I spotted a man walking on what looked like a tight rope, called a slack line. He grabbed a hula hoop from Hoopnotica and began to walk and hoop. I didn’t get a chance to try slack lining because I thought I’d be terrible and only could choose 5 classes while I was there but it looked cool. Who knew yogi’s were the future of the circus?

After dinner, I checked out the Main Tent event featuring Quixotic, “an ensemble of artists from various disciplines including aerial acrobatics, dance, fashion, film, music and visual f-x.” Basically a dance and music show, they featured fire dancing, musical instruments, singing and more contortionist like fluid movement. The crowd stood on its feet the entire time. There were lots of people dancing in a way I’m not used to seeing. It was very odd, almost rave like but with a yoga personality flair to it. Free spirit dancing is what I’ll call it. It made watching the performers a balancing act with my “ADHD.”

I didn’t stay up too late , because my morning was scheduled to start at 7:30 AM. On the schedule, there were performances that go until 1:30 AM on Friday and Saturday which is crazy since most people will have 8 AM sessions they are signed up for. I know I’m a baby when it comes to functioning on little sleep, and this made me feel even worse.

I was in for a fun surprise on Friday with a hike straight up Stratton Mountain. Literally, we followed a blue square ski trail from the bottom up. More on that later…

I am really disappointed that yoga teachers that i respect would actually take part in festivals offering meat and fish and every other type of animal product. It would be great if all yoga teachers would come together and pledge to not participate in any festival unless it is cruelty-free or at least vegetarian. I know that probably the majority of people that practice yoga are not vegetarians, but if we feed them meat at a yoga festivals, we will miss a wonderful opportunity to inform them of the benefits for themselves, the planet and the animals. In addition, we will miss the opportunity for them to enjoy wonderful, vegetarian food. I think that people should be able to live on a vegetarian diet for a few days, and many would probably be surprised how much they enjoy it.

I posted a petition at Care2.com to ask Wanderlust yoga festival to take meat off their menu. I would really appreciate your help in supporting it and spreading the word to others. It was inspired after I read the mission statement of Wanderlust. They portray themselves as being completely Sensitive, Conscious and Green. You can see their website at wanderlustfestival.com. I sent them the following email on June 10th to which they didn’t respond so I thought I would try to recruit some help. here is the email I sent:

I deeply appreciate your efforts to try to spread the incredible benefits of yoga; however, consciousness and connection needs to include all sentient beings. Please consider making this festival vegan or at least vegetarian. Countless sentients beings are suffering due to our insensitivity. I am sure you know that a vegan diet is the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves, the animals and the planet. Research shows that vegetarians have much less cancer and heart disease. Research shows that animal agriculture is the number one cause of global warming. Research shows that the animals suffer horrendously. Please read your mission statement. Supporting animal agriculture is not aligned with your mission statement. Please open your hearts to all sentient beings. These festivals would be an excellent way to educate people and to give them the opportunity to enjoy wonderful vegan food. Yoga philosophy is about Ahimsa not about business. I certainly would not attend your festival until the organizers are conscious enough to at least make it a vegetarian yoga festival. I am going to inform others about the inconsistency of your mission statement with the death menu being served. I am sure you are trying to make your festival appeal to the widest audience possible; however, by doing so you are perpetuating needless suffering that could end with simple awareness. Don’t forget that every dollar we spend can help end suffering. Sincerely, Kim Amlong

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